The Islamist-dominated Egyptian parliament is considering a law that allows a husband to have sex with his dead wife within the six hours following her death. Why? I don’t know. I guess if you think women are pieces of meat then it doesn’t much matter if they’re responsive or not. Although I think six hours is overly generous: rigor mortis is going to set in after 3 or 4 hours, maybe sooner in a warm climate. Maybe they should modify the law so you’re allowed to have sex with her corpse for three hours, and then you’re allowed to use her body as a surfboard for another twelve hours after that?
Oh, and they’re also considering legalizing marriage to 14-year-old girls and stripping divorce rights from women. The way they’re jumping up and down on women, I’m beginning to think they have delusions that they’re American Republicans.
(via B&W)
wait
WHAT?
American style democracy in action. Give uninformed, uneducated, and radical majorities democratic rights, and then complain about it when they take it too far. We depose a dictator and replace it with an extremist majority. I don’t know what’s wrong with that? Everybody who’s asking for Syria’s blood should look at Egypt very closely. Fucking extremists…can’t stand those bastards. There is no such thing as democracy in the Middle East (for those of you who think Israel’s a democracy, find yourself in one of those armed West Bank settlements or on the wrong side of the wall…or see if you can obtain a legitimate court case when you’re not in the dominant majority).
Just when I thought religious nut jobs couldn’t sink any lower, along comes a bunch of clerics to demonstrate my naiveté.
“I’m beginning to think they have delusions that they’re American Republicans”
I’m sure it’ll become a contest for multiple groups on who can become the most extreme the quickest.
Is religion the opiate of the masses, or is it actually the hallucinogen of the masses?
Can some islamic scholar type point out the scriptural basiss for this law? That should be some awesome reading…if you can get it past the pron filter.
On the plus side no need for a law allowing wanking into the trashbag used to dispose of the body I suppose.
Those middle eastern cultures sure is weird.
What? What?! WHAT?!!
I’m a bit inclined to ask how the question even arose, but I’m too afraid that I might be told the answer.
Glen Davidson
Because anything beyond six hours would just be plain wrong. (sarcasm off)
I am baffled. Dumbstruck.
The comments below the article are full of No True Scotsmans of course.
From the country which brought us mummification: Keep your dead fresh for millenia!
Of course. Beside special pleading, isn’t that all they’ve got?
During the Revolution, the women in Egypt learned to protest.
Trust me, they’ll do it again if that kind of law passes.
@Glen Davidson I’m a bit inclined to ask how the question even arose
The Ayatollah Khomeini wrote a book on Islamic rules for living, called in English, “The Little Green Book”.
In it you will find useful rules for living a happy, productive life such as:
A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate vaginally, but sodomising the child is acceptable. If a man does penetrate and damage the child then, he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl will not count as one of his four permanent wives and the man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister.
A man can have sex with animals such as sheep, cows, camels and so on. However, he should kill the animal after he has his orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in his own village, but selling the meat to a neighbouring village is reasonable.
If one commits the act of sodomy with a cow, a ewe, or a camel, their urine and their excrement become impure and even their milk may no longer be consumed. The animal must then be killed as quickly as possible and burned.
Why was this law proposed and what was the koran justification for it?
Or do I want to know?
While the Islamic scholars are deciding how long a body is dead before it is unfit for sex, Egypt has some serious problems.
Normally I don’t pay much attention to the Middle East. There is rarely any good news and often a lot of bad news. But once a factoid caught my eye.
The Nile river no longer flows to the sea. That means their main source of water is fully utilized. What is happening is salt water is creeping up the delta, where everyone lives.
1. The population of Egypt is 85 million and growing rapidly.
2. 40% of the population lives on less than $2 a day.
It looks like they may be entering a Malthusian crisis. These are rare but do happen. Basic food is subsidized. When world food prices went up recently, people rioted. This explains a lot of the recent instability in the country.
Doesn’t look like anyone there is paying much attention to this. I guess we will see what happens when you live in a desert and run out of water for agriculture while your population grows rapidly.
steve oberski #14
I’m going to call Poe on that because I can’t wrap my head around the idea anyone could be serious about that.
Sorry if I’m missing something here, but what’s wrong with having sex with a dead spouse, in a moral sense? (you’ll note the article mentions that the cleric who suggested it pointed out that it would apply to women having sex with their dead husbands, too).
Yeah, it’s icky, but dead people *are* meat. This has nothing to do with living people, and the implication that women are meant to be non-responsive and viewed as meat doesn’t necessarily follow. Wouldn’t catch my fancy, but if it helps a grieving person of either sex to mourn their loved one, I don’t see how this harms anyone – that’s the point of laws, right? I don’t think the purpose is to ban things we find squicky.
And there’s me thinking the brave Egyptians who risked and in some cases lost their lives demonstrating week after week had something to do with Mubarak’s downfall. Now I see it was all down to westerners.
How insane can religion get?, methinks we have not even scraped the surface!
They have few depths to which it will not go!
And it must be faced by every apologist out there that this is beyond fucking barking,it would be interesting,if not particularly illuminating,what the Vatican would make of it in the broader context…maybe a certain ‘green’ envy that they had not the balls to suggest it themselves!
But this is the hatred and fear incarnate that all religions hold for women…and always by the old and ignorant males that have obvious inadequate and twisted understanding of exactly what women are and what they feel, emotionally and intellectually.
They are afraid of women and cowardly in their depravity to the point of absolute disgusting…and yet so far far beyond even that description.
It is seemingly a fear so ingrained that screwing a dead woman’s corpse is seen as a right and to be encouraged in law!
Ethical morality, religion has it all, and the rest of us are supposed to respect that?
In fact the point they actually all demand and whine about let alone demand such acquiescence….
Not this fucking side of existence…never…ever!
Alverant #17
Maryam Namazie @ Freethoughtblogs has referenced this book more than once.
There is an english translation available online of which I have read parts, I couldn’t force myself to read the entire thing, I had a similar reaction to “On the Jews and their Lies” by Martin Luther.
… I’m beginning to think they have delusions that they’re American Republicans.
And Elizabeth Dole & both Mrs. Bushes promptly add codicils to their wills specifying immediate cremation.
Epinephrine #18
I agree that no living person is being harmed and there is an aspect of instinctive visceral reaction to the whole thing.
Don’t you think that this may be indicative of some deeper malaise within Egyptian society.
And it’s not as if they don’t possibly have more important and pressing matters to concern themselves with, what with trying to build a secular (hopefully) democratic society on the ashes of the previous dictatorship.
Wait? This law opens up a series of new questions.
What if a corpse is raped by a man not her husband. Do we stone the corpse, or do we have to revive her in order to stone her?
What if the act is being committed on a space ship traveling at 3/4 the speed of light? Is the six hours measured from the perspective of the man in the ship or from the perspective of the imam on earth?
What about women in persistent vegetative states?
What if a women dies, and is revived briefly and then dies again? Does the clock start at the first death, or does it get reset?
What about women who are dead on the inside?
That’s mighty generous of those nutjobs, but sadly “rigor mortis” does not apply to the male organ.
I thought consummating a marriage was permitted from the time the girl can take the man’s weight, and that there should be no age limit ? Those Egyptian theofascists still have a lot to learn from their Saudi counterparts, clearly.
steve oberski #23
Yes, and if the law is one-sided (which wasn’t the original religious interpretation), I can certainly see how it is unfair, and it does then reinforce the perception that it’s about men treating women as possessions.
Epinephrine @18,
Presumably the woman can only have sex with her dead husband AFTER rigor mortis has set in……
Unfortunately it appears that democracy is not “one size fits all” situations. If the people are uneducated and stupid they will vote religion into their government – and the laws will no doubt reflect this.
Hmm, I wonder if this applies to any other nation..?
Unfortunately, the people who risked their lives to get rid of the dictator Mubarak are not those who have profited politically from his downfall – at least so far. The Muslim Brotherhood, which dominates the Parliament elected since his fall, sat on the sidelines during the revolution – but they were the only semi-tolerated opposition throughout his rule, and were thus the best organised political force in its aftermath. They have also acted as an unofficial welfare safety net, and so gained considerable support. The hardline Salafis who are the next most powerful force are complete hypocrites, having regularly denounced elections as un-Islamic. One must hope that the sort of creepy lunacy demonstrated by this proposed law will discredit them.
My reactions to this are many and diverse…
1. Men want to have sex with dead women? Does it matter if they’re cold? And, as PZ points out, rigor mortis would seem to be a bit of a turn off (just in case being dead didn’t already mess things up), or does that make it tighter?
2. Why six hours? Six is okay but six hours and ten minutes is disgusting?
3. Why is such a law necessary at all? “You’re nicked my son!” “It’s okay officer it’s only been five and half hours”
4. In the ER when the doctors declare a time of death does everyone stand aside so the husband can pay his last respects?
5 “911, What’s your emergency?” “My wife is dead!” “Don’t worry sir EMS are on the way” “Err, could you hold them off for five minutes, there’s something I need to do first”
or
5b “911, What’s your emergency?” “My wife is dead!” “Don’t worry sir EMS is going to take at least 20 minutes to get there.”
6. Doesn’t the Egyptian parliament have anything better to do? Anything? Prune the fricken roses?
KG, yes, we were instrumental in assisting the population of Egypt at large in replacing a dictatorship. If you think the CIA’s role in the Egyptian uprising was non-existent, than it’s your own ignorance. I’m not disagreeing in the fact that it was the will of the Egyptian majority that helped finally turn the tide of a brutal and oppressive regime…Yet….the loudest voices that come to fill the power vacuum are radical Islamists. It’s the same problem that’s occurring in all the Arab Spring countries. Even Turkey, as secular as it seems on the surface, has an undercurrent of extremists waiting for the right time to act. In Syria, what you see is a secularist dictator who’s party and religious leanings are comprised of only a minority of Syrians (20%)….whilst the majority of Syrians are Sunnis that have been oppressed. Yet, it’s the Sunnis in Syria that will breed more extremism than the current government. The problem the West has with Syria is that it’s hostile and antagonistic towards Israel, will not allow its resources to be exploited (nationalized oil) by the West, and is currently allied with Russia. What they wouldn’t do for a regime change….yet guess who’ll take the reigns? The Sunni majority who will take revenge for decades of oppression by killing moderate Alawis, then will be even more of a hotbed for terrorist activities, and in 20 year’s time, you’ll have something far worse than an antagonistic strongman (who hasn’t called for the deaths of Americans mind you and only wants to prevent the exploitation if his country’s resources by external powers).
This is just too creepy for words. Ick.
Here is today’s over the top moment of ick.
If the husband has sex with the corpse soon after death, would it be possible for an egg to be fertilized? And using the magic of mixing religions, would it be possible to condemn the husband for knowingly bringing about a “person” condemned to never having a chance to be concieved.
I will stop now, I am squicking myself.
Why has this left me thinking of the movie Clerks??
This is why I fear revolution in america… Not because we might lose, but because we might win.
The number of smart, wise, and kind people in this country is far lower than the number of insane, cruel, and disgusting.
You’re wriggling: you said quite explicitly “We depose a dictator…”. If you think you know what the CIA did or didn’t do, that’s your ignorance – FFS, they are professional liars and propagandists, who naturally want it believed they were on the side of a democratic movement – but what’s absolutely certain is that the initiative, the persistence and the courage came from Egyptians.
WOLVERINES!
(Yes, a joke. But one that sometimes I fear will come true.)
@ raven
Check this article wrt population growth: Mideast Population Growth Slows But Women’s Status Remains Unresolved
The other problems remain. The solution? Empowerment of women.
(I was actually looking for a recent article (this one is from 2009), but my googlefoo is not up to scratch. IIRC, population growth is becoming ever less of a problem, dramatically so.)
@ #38 theophontes.
I just looked up Egypt’s popualtion growth rate.
In 2000 it was 1.72%. In 2011 it was 1.96%. It’s not declining in Egypt, in fact, there is a steady small increase overall.
1.96%/year is pretty high considering. The Egyptian ruling classes don’t see it as a problem. Whether it is a problem or not, we will find out.
A lot of large rivers no longer make it to the sea. One is the US Colorado river.
To be perfectly frank, I find their disrespect of the living far more egregious than any supposed disrespect of the dead.
theophontes777,
Here is a graph of population growth rate in Egypt, from the World Bank. As is the case just about everywhere, the growth rate has declined markedly in the last half century, but it remains significantly above the global rate (about 1.2%). The Arab World, along with sub-Saharan Africa, are where rates are now highest. You’re absolutely right about the solution; raven has a good point about the trigger for the revolution: among Arab countries, it was largely those where food prices rose (itself a secondary result of the financial crisis – speculative money flowing into commodities pushed the prices up) and the majority spend much of their income on food, where governments fell or were seriously challenged.
This might be a valid point if the way they want to treat a dead wife was not connected to how they want to treat a living wife.
So…Muslims don’t believe in a soul then?
Because logically that’s what this law is saying. The body is the wife.
What…
*rereads*
…what?
This “news” sure sounds Poeish to me.
Egyptians are pretty much people–just like the commentors here at FTB.
Egyptians are no more interested in necrophilia than you are.
The Poe law does apply here–doesn’t it!
Amerikan propaganda or whatever.
why are you folks so eager to demonize people in other countries and cultures. Try putting your thinking cap on when you read extreme stuff like this article.
I know this is terribly wrong of me, but I can’t help wishing that I could see a transcript of the debate over this bill. What in the world do the proponents say in its favor?
At least I can see the argument in favor of marrying 14 year old girls-it’s appalling, but comprehensible. Having sex with dead women…is that really a common enough fetish to codify into law? And what justification can there be…at least, what justification that people are willing to mention in public?
Strong start and then faltered at the finish line.
You do know what Poe means right?
Why, yes joed, you are absolutely fucking correct. All of us think that all Egyptians are advocating for this.
You, sir, are a fucking genius and a worthy guiding light for the rest of us.
That is, if one wants to follow a burning pile of shit.
Try putting on your thinking cap before you post.
Ooh, look, it’s not sexist after all: “Zamzami Abdul Bari said that marriage remains valid even after death adding that a woman also too had the same right to engage in sex with her dead husband.” Someone needs to take this man aside and have a conversation with him about biology. Not to mention sociology and typical human conventions about sex and death…
I’m not sure I understand most people’s reaction here. Yes, it’s very gross. But when the woman is dead, she is meat. It’s like having sex with a steak or roadkill. Grody/gnarly/squicky, and zero appeal to me, but that doesn’t mean that it should be illegal. What’s it harming?
Loved ones are the electricity making the meatsack go, not the meatsack. Honoring the deceased is honoring their memory, ideals, and what made them, them. Not honoring a decomposing corpse.
Hell, when I die I want med students to learn something from my meat vehicle, then if I had my way I’d let the meat feed some animals and enrich the soil, not have it burned up or stuck in a wood box.
Also better to read the source and then criticize IT rather than just call Poe and declare yourself smarter before you’ve even figured it out.
“I don’t like those people, it mUST be true” = idiocy = “I can’t believe that, it must not be true!”
Apparently all posters with nymes starting with “joe” are absolutely useless.
American propaganda from an Arab based news organisation that has a track record of producing reports critical of US policy in the Middle-East ?
For one I’d consider the idea that enough people would desire sex with a complete nonparticipating object to reflect a big problem about their views on sex and marriage.
Note this isn’t the idea of necrophiliacs, that is what baffles me.
For two, it’s amusing how this law denies the Muslim afterlife.
If you actually read the article I linked to, joed, the first thing you’d see is that an organization of Egyptian women are opposing the law.
@Matt
Well to be fair it’s an Arab publication, so we should be skeptical of slanderous stories they publish about non-Arabs like the African Egyptians or Persian Iranians.
Here is what happens when a river is totally diverted. Sea water is intruding up into the Nile delta. The delta itself is sinking as sea levels are rising.
Hmmm, a river is all utilized, sea water is moving upstream, the delta is sinking, sea levels are rising due to the global warming, and the population is growing rapidly. What could go wrong here?
Forget about the legalization of necrophilia, there’s something much more disturbing in the article PZ links to in the OP:
This is what happens when the lawmakers in a country are Twilight fans.
I’d expect the 14-year-old girls would need parental consent to get married – which seems to be precisely the state of marriage law in North Carolina and Texas. New Hampshire even permits 13-year old girls to get married, but they need a “waiver” from a judge to do so, and I have no idea about the criteria for granting or denying such a waiver.
It’s a step backwards for Egypt, of course, to reach Texas standards on this matter.
@55 PZ Myers
I did read the link and seems to me that Egyptian men could have been shown in that photo too.
I am not Egyptian so I don’t know for sure, but surely Egyptian men are no more interested in necrophilia than men of any other culture.
That all I meant to say. I would have been better off obviously if I had stopped there.
I would be sympathetic to your position if this was a perfect world in which women are not often (far, far too often) treated as mere objects of sexual gratification by/for men.
Taken without any context, the proposed law is simply strange. Unfortunately, viewed through the real-world lens of the way women are objectified throughout most of the world (some places and cultures in particular…), it cannot do anything other than damage the notion that women are independant people who don’t owe use of their body to anyone else.
In an ideal world, you’d be spot on.
This isn’t being proposed in an ideal world.
That is a generous time allotment considering the body has be in the ground within 24 hours by Islamic law. Maybe they can do an Irish wake. Stick her up on the table with her legs open that way the family does not lose any mourning time with the body and the husband can have is last conjugal bliss. I sure he wont mind the family watching since fucking dead bodies is a behavior I would associate with people who have the sexual resistant of a dog. I feel bad for the mother of the bride though, I sure it will be quite shocking to her. On the up side though, I am sure the widower can rape his way into a new marriage before he even makes home from the funeral.
joed:
The thing is, our assumed take on this is that it is only secondarily about necrophilia. It is almost certainly primarily about reminding women that their major worth is that of sex toys for their
ownersmastershusbands.That does not strike me as far-fetched for a highly religious culture.
Oh, sweet Ceiling Cat, that’s squicky!
@ Steve Oberski,
About post # 17:
I remember reading this nightmare list back in the mid eighties in an article from On the Issues Magazine. The focus of the issue was the womens’ rights, or lack thereof, in the middle east. And I can tell you it chilled me to the bone. The brutal physical abuse of children, women, and infants is horrifying. The amputation of female genitals, young girls and even babies who suffer extreme internal injuries because of intercourse by their “husbands”, and the damage that happens when girls must endure pregnancy and birth before their bodies are ready were covered in the issue. I had already known about some of it, but never with such detail before. It was the first place I learned about the Taliban and how women had to be wrapped in bags, these things called burkas, before they went outside, windows painted to block the light, women not being allowed out except with male relatives escorting them. If you had no male relatives, well then you stayed home and starved to death. And I read about how women were commonly trying to commit suicide by drinking battery acid. This was before the Taliban became a household word. They weren’t on the radar of any American politician.
When it came to diplomacy, governments (ours, theirs, and everybody’s) were perfectly happy to ignore the suffering and rights of women. We were not important enough to stand in the way of access to oil, to profits.
I fear it is all too real.
Do you ever have a point?
It’s got fuck-all to do with Egyptians’ actual tendencies toward necrophilia relative to others’. This is about religious whackaloons trying to pass a misogynistic law to get more power, for Islam and men in particular.
Husband: “Hey, honey, are you interested in a little of the hanky and panky?”
Wife: “No!”
Husband: “Are you sure? It’s your duty!”
Wife: (plays dead)
Husband: “AHA! GOT YOU NOW!”
Right. But we’re talking about legislators, not people.
Pretty sure you don’t understand what Poe’s Law means. The reason it’s hard to distinguish between parodies and genuine extremism is that genuine extremism exists.
You’re doing something along the lines of the Poe Paradox, where you assume something extremist is most likely a parody.
But necrophilia is a victimless crime!
They really know how to put the Death in death cult, don’t they?
For the people arguing “Eh, it’s just meat, what’s the big deal?”: Yes, everyone here agrees the wife no longer exists and can’t be ‘harmed’ by having her hubby masturbate in her decaying remains. And if you agree to have your corpse used as fuck toy, have fun (well, you won’t be having the fun, but you know what I mean). I suspect most people here are objecting to the idea that the clerics’ view of a husband’s possession of his wife’s body extends beyond death.
Note that tigerhawkvok said at the end of his comment:
In other words, you want something ‘useful’ done with your remains. I noticed you didn’t say: “if someone wants to fuck my corpse, it’s okay with me” Why? Because even if we won’t exist anymore, we think we should have the choice of what happens to our possessions after death, including the meatsack we used to be.
Haven’t we seen this movie before? It’s eerily reminiscent of the beginning of Persepolis, at least…
Unfortunately that’s a fair criticism of most Republicans. There are economic conservatives in the Republican Party who respect women’s rights but they seem to be a minority.
As I already wrote in another thread the theocratic Egyptian government recently sent a 71 year old man to prison for ridiculing Islam. I bet American Christians (AKA Republicans) would try the same thing if they could get away with it.
Horrabin – I for one don’t mind if someone has sex with my body after I die…
heatherdalgleish:
You need to wake the fuck up. Do you suppose this could encourage some men to rape and murder their wives?
Not sure. But, funnily enough, the Wiki article on necrophilia says this:
I don’t particularly care who does what with their spouse after the spouse is dead, though if one is planning to do something like that it’s morally best to get their consent first. This, on the other hand, is disgusting:
@ KG
Beyond simple increase in numbers, we should also take into regard that (ideally) living standards for Egyptians will increase. Even if the rate of population increase were to decrease further, there will be a dramatic increase in demand on resources (like fresh water) even with a fairly stable population.
@ dianne
There is a common tendency under authoritarian systems to prohibit everything that is not specifically endorsed. Why they would specifically have to state that something is not haraam may be interesting but certainly squicky. Obviously they have had to make a ruling on such cases. I would be fascinated to know the religious precedents they have applied.
Rough guess: It is not fornication, because one is still married in death. It is therefore “permissible for him to touch”. And also:
(linky, Use ctrl-F to see reference)
My theory about the six hours: *ahem*
Fuck knows – though of course that would be foul. My points aren’t invalidated, though. I’d rather squick at the real harm.
And I will repeat my point, the one you have ignored; this proposed law to allow for the fucking of the corpse is related to how they want to treat the women when they are alive. They are not separate issues.
kantalope a dit:
I realize you may be satisfied with the information provided so far, but for the sake of multilingualism, I shall quote the Moroccan sheikh responsible for the infamous necrophilia fatwa:
So, while it may be argued that necrophilia harms no one, Sheikh Zamzami’s line of reasoning for allowing it seems to be different. I get the impression that he thinks that married women are permanently consenting to sex (this consent extending for all eternity), which is quite a horrible idea by itself.
On a less important note, I really cannot understand why he made a fatwa explaining when necrophilia is allowed if he was just trying to satisfy the demands of one man. He makes this thing public and then wonders what’s all the fuzz about?
Finally, I have no idea where the six-hour rule came from. Nor could I discover why some Egyptian would like to codify this thing into law.
***
Not to be unfair with Zamzami, in the interview he says quite a few things that I would not expect from a conservative Islamic cleric, such as «L’agression sexuelle ne dépend pas de l’habit de la femme, mais de l’éducation des hommes.»
Also: carrots, sex toys, and the discussion of whether masturbation is a sin.
And they are being driven out of the GOP by social conservative witch hunters.
======
And those insisting this is a victimless crime, in a way you are right. But keep in mind the importance of enthusiastic consent. If you are getting enthusiastic consent from a corpse, you may need to check your dosage levels.
@ Brownian
Ye Gods! Why do you remind me:
(Source: “An Account of Egypt” -Herodotus : Free on Amazon)
Well, presumably, I could give consent pre-death as enthusiasticly for being used as a sex toy as I could for being used as an organ repository.
But, yeah, that’s not the issue here. This isn’t an issue about the role of corpses, it’s about the role of women.
They’re still separate issues in principle, and it’s still worth squicking more at the real harm, rather than highlighting the mildest symptom of a noxious syndrome.
Chinese authorities may support pro-abortion laws as part of their disregard for women’s reproductive autonomy. Squicking at their promotion of abortion isn’t the appropriate response, there. Squicking at their disregard of basic human rights and freedoms, is.
I grok that this is about living women. I was trying to make a point (and failed (as usual)) about rape and consent. Sorry.
Don’t you realize that
JesusAllah causes the dead to rise again?Glen Davidson
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/neoism/necro.htm
;-)
@theophontes777, Brownian:
Herodotus sounds like he’s reporting an article from the Egyptian equivalent of the Daily Mail: because once someone was caught doing a terrible thing, the reader should fear that the terrible thing will happen to their loved one.
Thankfully Herodotus has a better reputation than the Daily Mail, not least because in this case he mentions that the embalmer’s colleagues shopped the bastard.
“because once someone was caught” -> “because someone was once caught”
My kingdom for an edit function!
Nice hand waiving, Heather.
Trigger warning!
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.
.
.
.
I’m sorry, but this sounds like pre-facto or perhaps post-facto permission for husbands who say, “I’m going to kill you and rape your dead body.”
So, is it too late to dig grandma up for some surfin’?
And they refer to us as barbarians….
steve oberski -> The brief period during which I went out with an Iranian woman, she referred to a religious tract which teenagers would read out of earshot of the adults and laugh uproariously, but to which they were somehow expected to be deferential.
The one tortured example she related was how if you are a man and your bedroom is above that of your aunt… and one day, the floor collapses and you accidentally fall on her an impregnate her (How?! Have these people never had sex or even heard vague rumours about how it works before??), then the baby will be “legitimate”, whatever the proper term was.
I’m wondering if that book is one and the same. Certainly has the same general sort of sexual WTFs going on.
So… same-sex bad, corpse-sex okay?
This is a strange –and complicated– issue, when considered from a strictly legal standpoint. A law “allowing” a husband to have sex with the only slightly fresh corpse of his wife (or, I guess, vice versa) implies that it was hitherto illegal to do so. There had to be some kind of penalty: a fine or jail sentence.
Should there be? I don’t know — legally speaking, I’m not sure I’d want the government getting involved with that. I can buy the argument that it’s gross as all get out, disrespectful or possibly sick, and probably immoral on some level. But should it actually be illegal?
Of course, the point is really moot here, because we’re not dealing with something like one of the US states going through old pieces of legislation and getting rid of archaic or unnecessary make work penalties against “crimes” like sodomy, bestiality, incest, or necrophilia. As everyone has been saying, this change in what is now “allowed” is about dehumanizing women and sending a chilling message on where their rights are going — which, looking at the rest of the revisions, appears to be right out the window and in a burqa.
Janine – I think I’ve addressed your points. If you think I haven’t, and would like me to – maybe you could give me more to work with…
There’s a problem with the “it’s just meat after you’re dead” point of view. One is that the relatives of a dead person should not be disgusted by how the remaining shell of their loved one is treated. Another is that we have rules, laws, and customs about treating human corpses with respect and disposing of them with due ritual. A new law such as this runs counter to both those considerations.
Heather, you have not shown how the treatment of the body of the wife is any different in death as in life. She is there to serve at the whim of the husband, the only real human in the partnership.
Meanwhile, back in the “enlightened” US, you can be a person before being conceived!
I see the parallel, and I see that it’s part of a noxious syndrome – but I still find it far more noxious what happens to the women while they’re actually living.
Heather, I also think that what happens to a living woman is more noxious. But it is connected to the same though process.
Why is that so fucking difficult to understand? And why dismiss this out of hand?
Run this whole idea of religion being moral by me one more time.
Sometimes me thinks, religion should just be illegal.
I fucking understand, and far from dismissing it, I’ve addressed it, repeatedly, in clear English.
Meh…
Until they get killed, because, well, shucks, it’s just sort of regrettable that husbands could get off the hook for rape and murder if the only evidence traceable to him is his semen.
“Yes, officer, I was there, but the murderer got away. Didn’t get a clear look at him. Then I fucked her corpse.”
But it should be legal, because it doesn’t matter that people get squicked out about it — that’s totally the important thing, you know, if we’re being “rational.”
Well, put it another way – I find it offensive that they’re extending the wife’s role as passive sex toy and child-bearer, whose feelings and consent are incidental, even after her death – while still finding it less noxious than the fact that it’s happening to living women.
And for what it’s worth, I wouldn’t mind if men and women had equal rights to screw their dead spouses – especially if said spouses consented to it before death. I think, in principle, necrophilia is a victimless crime. It’s not my bag – but purely in principle, on its own, I find nothing ethically reprehensible about a man fucking the body of his recently deceased wife.
Guys, it’s looking like the story is bullshit. Apparently some pro-Mubarek journo posted a rumor about this, and various news sources are running with it, because that how journalism works these days.
Hello, we’re trying to have a civilization here.
Yeah – I find rearing and slaughtering other sentient beings for us to eat to be more reprehensible than shagging the deceased – if we’re discussing the topic of ‘civilisation’…
Oh wait, you’re not really meaning civilisation in any real, meaningful, morally valent way. You’re just making an empty argument from disgust. Oh well.
Reminds me, though, of a story I once heard, where the Greeks were appalled by the fact that another culture canna aliased their dead relatives, and considered this their proper respect of the dead. These other people then asked the Greeks what THEY did, and were appalled to hear that they burned the bodies of their dead relatives.
That should be ‘cannibalised their relatives’. Autocorrect caught me on the hop, there.
Why in the name of Beelzebub’s short and curlies would they think that this weirdness should be enshrined in law…Why?
They are seeming to suggest that Egyptian men are so retarded and sexually dysfunctional that they can only get it on with a corpse?
Or is that just fundamental Islamic scholars that have severe problems with relating to live women?
(I think WordPress ate my comment. It doesn’t show here nor in the sidebar. Trying again…)
me said:
Martin Wagner said:
That’d explain it, then. Just checked that denial that any such law was ever proposed seems to be Muslim Bros. official response to the outcry.
No, no, I got your point.
The whole point behind this story (even though – thankfully – it may in fact be utter bullshit) – is that we (and by that I mean you, me, and most of the folks here) believe that there’s a general lack of consent, enthusiastic or otherwise, to be found. Largely because consent isn’t being sought.
What you said was both on point and nicely snarky.
At the very end of the article:
“Islamist members of Egyptian parliament, however, accuse these laws of “aiming to destroy families” and have said it was passed to please the former first lady of the fallen regime, Suzanne Mubarak, who devoted much of her attention to the issues of granting the women all her rights.”
Aiming to destroy families, now where have I heard that before?
That is all.
Why would being upset about one aspect of a repulsive system of humanity-denial prevent me, or even inhibit me, from being upset at another aspect of the same system?
Or aspects of a similar system elsewhere?
Promoting abortion in women who don’t want it is just as replusive as preventing it in women who do.
Likewise, creating a climate in which abortion is promoted or degraded, or otherwise seen as something other than a personal choice by the pregnant woman.
Again, making the presumption that this (hopefully imaginary) law exists in a cultural vacuum and can therefore be safely ignored as ‘technically fine’ suggests an almost willful lack of regard for reality.
Do you honestly believe this is about the acceptance that a corpse is merely the shell of a person and therefore deserves no special reverence?
Or do you believe it has a hell of a lot more to do with reinforcing the presumption that a woman is her husband’s property?
Poe’s law in action.
Sastra #96
Most places have laws about disrespect to a cadaver. The Irish folk song The Night Pat Murphy Died is about that.
And how.
I wouldn’t call myself hugely confident this is a legit story, yet. Yes, I’m finding some dozen sources in news searches, but things can bloom that far out before corrections catch up.
So far I’m getting it’s al-Arabiya’s Abeer Tayel quoting al-Ahram’s Amro Abdul Samea as reporting it’s a letter from Egypt’s National Council for Women protesting this. Rather convoluted; and there’s no direct quotes from the parliamentarians alleged to be considering it. And the NCW page doesn’t mention it, so far as I can see, tho’, for the record, I had to read it through machine translation.
Also, for what it’s worth, the CSM’s Dan Murphy sez he doesn’t buy it.
Maybe the necrophilia thing is a throw away distraction so they can push the divorce and paedophilia laws through without a fuss.
Any you just gotta believe that, down in God’s Wrath, GA, some GOP politician is saying “Now hold on there son. Them Ay-rabs just might be on to sump’en”.
It’s illegal according to the Canadian Criminal Code, Section 182(b):
Technically, I may be guilty of that one, but then also of blasphemous libel.
Maybe they figure it is their last shot at that anal they never managed to talk their wife into while she was alive?
Adding:
Zeinbia (Egyptian blogger) says she thinks it’s BS, too.
Pfft. Should be ‘Zeinobia’. Blessed by the lord of tpyos, yadda yadda…
# 17 Alverant says:
Not from Iran, but from Al Sistani the Shia Ayatolla from Iraq:
http://www.sistani.org/
It’s all in there. Same fuck-nuttery.
If this were an automotive thread, now would be the time that an Amsoil droid pops in to tell us about the wonders of synthetic lubricants.
I had that ‘Ew’ reaction, but like a good skeptic I’m trying to think beyond that, hard as it is.
I thought that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had a paragraph about bodily autonomy, but I can’t seem to find it now. Still, that seems like a good principle to apply, that everyone should have the final say-so on what happens to their body, and that should extend beyond life. On that principle, one should be able to stipulate that a designated person could practice necrophilia with one’s lmortal remains or disallow it, just as you can allow the donation of organs or not, or specify the disposal of your body.
That the default under any circumstances should be that it’s okay to fuck a corpse without explicit permission sounds problematic to me, and I wouldn’t like to assume that marriage vows would give automatic access, if I can put it that way. To do so smacks of treating the spouse as property, as has been mentioned upthread.
Tl;dr You can be a necrophiliac if you want, but get explicit permission first. And always, always practice safe sex.
Also, I am reminded of a sketch Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones had in their live show a couple of decades ago, where their gormless alter egos had an appalling conversation about necrophilia and whether it was okay to continue having sex with one’s partner if they snuffed it in mid-act. And by appalling, I mean appallingly funny.
@ Ing
We had a case in China a year or so ago. It was claimed that dumplings where being made from cardboard. There was even a “hidden camera” footage on the internet. It turned out later, after a huge outcry, to be a ruse. But the story had followed on the heels of the sordid affairs of melamine poisoned milk (in which many people died) and the artificial eggs scams.
What is being claimed here is taken to be credible not so much because people are gullible, but because islamists (in this particular case, but all goddists in general) do really come up with such truly ridiculous and perverse ideas. My all time favourite (not even a Poe):
@ No One
Hehe:
Oh, thank fucking god for that. I’ll be getting that Mercedes Benz after all.
No more trimming for teh Ebil Oberlawd ™ .
Apparently I arrived late to the scene, but :
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2012/0426/Egypt-necrophilia-law-Hooey-utter-hooey
You may not like CSM but their reputation for journalistic integrity is right up at the top.
DLC
Thanks for the link..otherwise I’m with:
janiceintoronto
This is just too creepy for words. Ick.
-Dead fukken (is) crazy-
1) I’m glad, FUCKING glad, that this is turning out to look like a myth. Even though Poe’s Law… {shudder}
2) If it turns out that it’s not a hoax, or simply that it’s a convincing Poe, Janine #42, wins the thread. The fact that it is even believable for a second that this sort of “women as objects” horseshit flies is…{rage building. Louis SMASH!}
Louis
Wow.
I’m speechless.
So now when their 14 year old bride commits suicide — and who would blame her — they can commit paedophilia and a necrophilia at the same time!
Updating:
According to Ahmed Zahran talking to Tunisia Live, The ‘farewell sex’ part was bullshit.
The 14-year-old thing… apparently not entirely. ‘There are talks the Salafis may propose that…’
More at the link.
@AJ
Oh wonderful! A hoax and faux outrage is going to bury an actual atrocity. Yay journalism!